the bitter sea.

Despite my cat's insistent nuzzling, I welcomed 4 a.m. like the glorious promise of a sunrise over Angkor Wat.  There was sanctity and knowing.  I had slept through the night.  I did not have to rush.  I had choices.  Coffee first, then yoga.  The thought of yoga, then coffee.  Facebook, the thought of yoga, the thought of coffee, and then a mad rush to work.  There was compromise.  I had coffee at work.  Yoga at 7:15 pm. 

This morning the politics of 4 a.m. was not complicated.  I was not rounding 4 a.m. after a sleepless night.  "I should just stay up.  I only have 2 more hours of sleep." I was not wrestling with a barrage of personal or work issues, although they lurk.  They always lurk. I was clear.  The morning was mine.  Sanctuary.

I visited Cambodia in fall 2008. Sanctuary has long been a twisted notion there. Under the Khmer Rouge, schools were prisons.  Knowing was dangerous. Lush fields were graves. A polite term, graves. Scraps of clothing, remnants of the dead still rise up in that bitter sea, those fields.

As the bus approached the outskirts of Phnom Penh, our guide pointed out the stupa that rose up from the center of this killing field.  He explained that we would see thousands of bones and skulls in the base of the shrine.  He talked about the field and the importance of staying on the path. Camera bound and generally eager to digitally frame everything thing that I could, I decided that I would take only a single photograph of the pinnacle.

One click.

One click was my grace that day.  My grace in the bitter sea.